Figuring Things Out

  I have been a fan of Bill Bryson for many years now. Starting with "A Short History of Nearly Everything" (2003), I have tried t...

   Jantar Mantar is one of the iconic monuments of Delhi. It figures in almost every representational image of the city skyline alongside th...

One of the most remarkable things I learnt this week is about an organic compound called Indole. The topic came up randomly on X through a B...

  What is the world made up of?  We all remember something about this from our school days: All matter is made up of atoms, which in turn ar...

  Statistics was never one of my favourite subjects. When faced with grades at the wrong end of the bell-curve , I would console myself with...

This is not a book I would ever pick on an impulse. The cover itself  is quite intimidating - a confusing, colorful blob of tangled rib...

Strange are the ways of the Indian media. A few days ago, an Indian scientist-entrepreneur based in Japan won the country's top envir...

There is lies, damn lies and statistics . And then there is Prof. Hans Rosling . Rosling was Swedish specialist in Global Health, and a ...

Is there one invention from India that has become a household name in the globe?  Is there one technology that has transformed the product...

Last week there were two interesting events in New Delhi that gave us interesting perspectives on how Science and Technology is viewed in ...

How difficult is it for science & technology to thrive in India? Everytime I see a news article or TV reporter gushing about the ach...

If you wanted to cover a large flat space with with equal pieces, without leaving any gaps, which shape would you choose? In 300 CE, Papp...

Clostridium botulinum (Image source: Wikipedia) In 1895 a Belgian bacteriologist named Ermengem took a close look at a piece of rott...

"Annals of science", it seems, "is littered with blunder, mishap and blind alley made good". The Independent came up w...

"A surface of silicon was revealed as a land of gentle, steadily rising undulations, in which the track of the probe could be seen l...

"Although Indians blame ideology (and sometimes democracy) for their failings, the truth is that a mundane inability to implement pol...

. During autumn, how do the Ginko trees ( Ginkgo biloba ),come up with the brightest yellow foliage? Botanists refer to this phenomenon a...

One of the most fascinating TV series I've ever seen, is available online for free!  :-) James Burke's BBC series - "Connecti...

. At a time when I`m grappling with the prevailing `theories` in the Social Sciences, it was a great to see this wonderful video on the lif...